The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
Farmers raise concerns
Local dairy producers discuss pricing, competition, immigration
NEW WOODSTOCK, N.Y. » Dairy farmers had the opportunity to air their grievances regarding consumer awareness, labor issues and the world economy to business and federal representatives Wednesday.
Northeast Dairy Farmers Cooperatives Policy Adviser Bob Gray and Congresswoman Claudia Tenney, R-22, met with 20 farmers from across New York at Holmes Acres Farm in New Woodstock to hear what they had to say.
“We want to hear from you and hear the issues so we know what we can do on the federal side,” Tenney said. “We have pressing issues facing all of you. Our mission today is to figure out how you can help us help you.”
Tenney said there’s around 5,000 dairy farms in New York, which is the third largest dairy producer in the nation. She wanted to know what can be done before developing a prognosis and possibly a five-to-10 year plan.
“I’m here with my wife and my brother and we’re milking a couple hundred cows. I think one
of the issues we’re mostnervous about right now is our exports,” Bill Banker of Blue Hill Farm said. “We’ve got 14 to 17 percent of our milk being exported and it seems like the Trump Administration is picking quite a lot of wars and trade wars and it doesn’t take a lot of backing up of milk to really create quite a problem.”
One local farmer said in the milk industry, the only people who are feeling the pain are the milk producers, and everyone else up the chain is doing fine.
“The export market is very poor, and if we renegotiate NAFTA and Class 7 sales with Canada, we can start to sell more. We lost 300 million pounds of milk sales in New York state to Canada after losing the market,” Gray said.
When it came to thework force, several farmers were concerned about Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity, and were in favor of a bill for migrant workers looking for paths to work in the United States.
Bret Bossard of Barbland Farm, who is a member of the National Dairy Promotion and Research Board, said he was college roommates with John Collins, a farmer in Rome who had his farm raided by ICE agents. Collins said ICE did not identify themselves or produce a warrant, and when Collins attempted to record the agents on his cellphone, it was destroyed and he was handcuffed.
“The way it was handled was certainly troublesome,” Bossard said.
Milk at schools was also a hot button topic among farmers who said the decision to only serve skimmilk hurt the market.
“We have these dietary guidelines developed by the previous administration in 2010 and when it went to skim milk, we lost 288 million half pints of milk that weren’t sold in the schools over a three year period. That was money taken out of the farmer’s pocket,” Gray said. “We have to get back to whole milk.”
Work has been done to bring 1 percent and 2 percent milk back into schools, as well as whole milk.
In the past, local farmers expressed frustration about where their money goes when they look at their milk check and see around 15 cents per 100 pound taken off for marketing, but never seeing milk being marketed in New York.
“The paradigm shift for marketing has changed. The ‘Got Milk’ ads that we used to see, they backed away from that. They’re expensive and even in the 90s,
“We have these dietary guidelines developed by the previous administration in 2010 andwhen it went to skimmilk, we lost 288 million half pints ofmilk that weren’t sold in the schools over a three yearperiod. Thatwasmoney takenoutof the farmer’spocket. Wehave toget back towholemilk.”
— Northeast Dairy Farmers Cooperatives Policy Adviser Bob Gray
it didn’t help,” Bossard said. “Our money now is spent through other people’s money. We employ food scientists to work at McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Dominoes and other big local chains. It’s why Pizza Hut is coming out with 20 percent more cheese, all these restaurants switching to butter and more. There’s things being done, it’s just not active marketing a product, but marketing the industry.”
One of the suggestions Gray had regarding marketing is to shake things up.
“We need to be a lot more aggressive in marketing dairy products. When I go around to the annual meetings to the co-ops, I see them developing new products,” Gray said. “We need to get out in the market with new products so we have more that the consumer can look at.”
Several farmers have a bleak outlook on the future, but Bossard gave others a perspective.
“There’s nobody that has more stainability than farmers. What we do with cows today, we’re using tens of million less cows than we did in 1960 and we’re making three times the milk,” Bossard said. “It’s amazing everything we’re doing in the dairy industry. We’re doing it for our livelihoods and for the world in general.”